Dulaney field hockey blanks Churchill and advances to Class 4A state championship game

Dulaney’s field hockey team scored a goal in each half and defeated Winston Churchill, 2-0, in the Class 4A state semifinal game, played Monday night at Paint Branch High.

The Lions (12-6) advance to the state finals for the second straight year and they will play South River, Saturday, Nov. 10, at 1:30 p.m. at Washington College.

South River defeated Dulaney, 2-1, last year in the state championship game.

Sidney Snyder scored the first goal, off an assist by Kate Proefrock, with 2:42 left in the first half.

The play began with a nice feed from Zoe Hermann to Proefrock and it ended with a reverse sweep into the cage.

“We’ve been saying all year we want to have a nice reverse sweep goal and it was a great day to have it, Dulaney coach Kellie Fialcowitz said. “It was beautiful, it was well-played and I can’t draw it up any better than that.”

Snyder knew the Lions, who out-shot the Bulldogs, 11-3, needed to make something happen.

“It was just really in the moment,” Snyder said. “I saw that it was open and we were really struggling with our shots in the beginning, even though we were dominating and just once it was open I knew we needed one to get our momentum up and get us through the game.”

Dulaney increased the pressure early in the second half and finally got its second goal on a shot by defender Mae Dickens with 2:33 left in the game.

Dickens was part of a defense, with Mae Jung, Emma Chandler and Amalia Hobbs that helped secure the shutout.

“Our defense did a great job,” Fialcowitz said. “They stepped up. Overall, it was a great team win.”

The Lions also got fine play and hustle from Bridget Kelly and Emily Mobray as they repeatedly kept the ball in the Churchill zone.

When the Bulldogs did threaten the Dulaney zone, it was mostly because of the speed of Lizzie Hsu and hard work from Alex Sperling and Lucia Alem.

Fialcowitz knew they were dangerous as her team clung to the one-goal lead.

“You can’t sit on 1-0 and be comfortable by any stretch of the imagination, but you get that second one in and you can kind of rest of a little easy and it takes some of the pressure off,” she said. “We are having fun. That’s all we want is for them to have fun and they were having a blast out there.”

Snyder is looking forward to playing in her second straight state title game and hopefully having more fun.

“We are really going to focus on Saturday,” Snyder said. “We are going up against South River again and we really want to redeem ourselves.”